Page 20 of Guess Again

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Monday, July 14, 2025

DETECTIVE MADDIE JACOBSON SAT BEHIND HER DESK AT THE MILWAUKEE Police Department.

She tried to work but was getting nothing accomplished that morning.

Her time with Ethan at the cabin up north felt like a lifetime ago, and any peace those quiet days had offered was long gone.

“Jacobson,”

another detective said as he walked past her cubicle.

“Isn’t the parole hearing today?”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah.”

She checked her watch.

“Going on right now.”

“How come you’re not there?”

Maddie pushed a smile onto her face.

“I went last time.”

She patted her chest.

“Didn’t think I could stomach looking at him again.”

“Hang in there.

There’s no way the son of a bitch is getting out.”

She lifted her chin and smiled as her colleague hurried off.

Maddie Jacobson had been sixteen years old when she narrowly escaped becoming the Lake Michigan Killer’s next victim.

For thirty-two years Maddie had carried the burden of being the sole survivor and only woman to keep her life after being abducted from the Milwaukee area during the summer of 1993.

Now forty-eight, Maddie still bore the wounds from that long-gone summer.

A scar traced her abdomen, from her navel to her sternum, where he had inserted the knife.

The internal bleeding and blood loss had temporarily stolen the sight from her left eye, now restored to the minimum level of visual acuity needed to enter the police academy. In the mirror and in photos, the remnants of Bell’s palsy were still visible—a paralyzed facial nerve that faintly drooped the left side of her face. And a red, blotchy scar decorated her left breast from where he had tattooed a black heart into her skin. Even the skills of a plastic surgeon had not been able to fully erase it.

The physical reminders, however, paled in comparison to the psychological damage that was done.

Mercifully, the years had erased much of her memory about her time in captivity, so that today, only with great effort and concentration, could Maddie recall how she had managed to escape from the shores of Lake Michigan after he brought her there to kill her and pose her body like the eight other women he’d claimed that summer.

Those memories included a makeshift knife she’d crafted from the edge of a picture frame and a piece of driftwood she found in the sand.

Maddie had used both to win her freedom.

Days after her escape, Francis Bernard had been arrested for the murder of Detective Henry Hall, and dead women stopped showing up on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Maddie was certain, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Francis was the man who abducted her.

But no hard evidence had ever linked him to her, and any proof that might have existed was incinerated when Francis set his home ablaze.

It was thirty years later, at Francis’s first parole hearing in 2023, that she first met Ethan Hall.

They were both there to speak out against Francis being released.

The man had affected each of their lives in ways unimaginable—nearly killing Maddie and setting loose a lifetime of nightmares every time she slept; and leaving Ethan fatherless when he was just thirteen years old.

Their pain had brought them together, and a shared commitment to keep Francis behind bars strengthened their union.

Now, two years later, she and Ethan were more than lovers. They were soulmates, initially united by grim circumstances, but forever tied to one another by a mutual determination to prevent the evils of one man from dictating their lives or happiness.

Despite the fact that Francis had been behind bars for more than three decades, Maddie could not rest easy.

A decade earlier, after Francis Bernard had been in prison for twenty-two years, the first letter arrived.

It came a week after the ACLU won a legal battle demanding better living conditions in the prison where Francis was held.

One of the stipulations granted inmates in solitary confinement access to the U.S.

postal service, allowing them to receive and send letters through the mail. And like clockwork, a new letter had found its way to Maddie’s mailbox every year since.

“Hey.”

She heard Ethan’s tender voice behind her and slowly spun around in her chair to face him.

“Well?”

“Denied,”

Ethan said.

Maddie let out a deep breath.

“Thank God.”